Few Major Changes for Taiwan After Trump-Xi Meeting at G-20

TAIWAN CAN breathe a sigh of relief after the Trump-Xi meeting which took place on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in Argentina on Saturday. Namely, Taiwan did not come up in any substantive manner during the meeting, with economic tensions between America and China being the main object of negotiation between Trump and Xi.

It was thought before the meeting that China would seek to discourage America from continued arms sales to Taiwan, in particular seeking the cancellation of a planned 330 million USD sale of F-16 fighter planes. Nevertheless, after the meeting, America has at the very least not publicly relented on such arms sales.

American president Donald Trump (center) and other world leaders at the G-20. Photo credit: White House/Public Domain

Indeed, had Taiwan come up in any significant manner during the meeting, this could have potentially been dangerous. One does not know whether the KMT’s victories in 2018 local elections have forced an American reevaluation of Taiwan’s current political situation or not. It is a perpetual danger for Taiwan that political events in Taiwan will lead American analysts to conclude that Taiwan is a lost cause and not worth supporting.

Likewise, even if analysts on the ground in Taiwan may be highly informed, their superiors in Washington sometimes have a far more abstract view of Taiwan. And, as Taiwan is fundamentally a geopolitical chess piece for the Trump administration, what Taiwan should beware of above all else is that America and China will unpredictably come to a deal that signs away Taiwan’s democratic freedoms and sovereignty to China as part of some grand bargain.

Instead, the effects for Taiwan going forward after the Trump-Xi meeting may primarily be economic for Taiwan, seeing as Taiwan has also been affected by the US-China trade war and Taiwanese companies face questions regarding whether the trade war will be something they have to deal with in the long-term.

America and China have agreed to temporarily suspend imposing new tariffs on each other as part of their ongoing trade war, with Trump agreeing not to move forward with a new round of tariffs he planned to impose on China for 90 days, and China agreeing to buy a greater amount of US trade goods in order to narrow the US-China trade deficit, particularly agricultural products such as soybeans. China also agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance, agreeing to the US war on opioids, and both sides voiced agreement for another meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

So, on paper at the very least, the US-China trade war has been put off for another 90 days. This truce is unlikely to hold in the long-term, given fundamentally irreconcilable priorities between America and China as rival superpowers, but both sides have likely agreed to a holding pattern for the time being because they hope to resolve other uncertain factors first. For example, it may be that both sides hope first to resolve the question of North Korea’s denuclearization before they decide to make any other further moves in their trade war. North Korea has successfully maneuvered itself into a position in which it is able to leverage on both America and China independently of China, of which it has historically been the client state of.

Some also take the view that Xi Jinping’s position is presently not strong enough to secure any concrete wins over the Trump administration through the trade war, hence why Xi was relatively conciliatory during the meeting.

Brian Hioe was one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, and occasional translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.
丘琦欣，創建破土的編輯之一，專於撰寫社會運動和政治的自由作家偶而亦從事翻譯工作。他是出生於紐約的台裔美人。他自哥倫比亞大學畢業，是亞洲語言及文化科系的碩士，同時擁有紐約大學的歷史，東亞研究及英文文學三項學士學位。

About New Bloom

New Bloom is an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific, founded in Taiwan in 2014 in wake of the Sunflower Movement. We seek to put local voices in touch with international discourse, beginning with Taiwan.